


Doctor (verb)

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Series: Pre-13 Fic: Post-Reveal, Pre-Series [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Fan Characterisation, Gen, Injury/illness, Post-Reveal Pre-Series, Pre-13 Fic, References To:, Trans Male Character, injections/needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12150933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: Doctor:Transitive Verb - doctored; doctoring.1 a :to give medical treatment to.(best read as part of a series)





	Doctor (verb)

  


* * *

  


Lee moans. Everything's going dark around the edges of his vision. He can't tell if it's the effect of the fever or just the dingy hut he's suddenly dragged into.

"You're ok, you're ok," The Doctor repeats, arms tightening around him to keep him upright.

"C'n breathe..." He slurs. It's all black now. He can't tell if his vision's gone, or if he's so tired his eyes are closed but he can't feel it anymore. Nausea swirls in his stomach as the Doctor roughly drags him around. His legs hit something hard and he's pushed onto some kind of bed, where his world finds stillness again.

A hand pushes on his shoulder so he's forced on his back. It makes the world lurch and it's so unfair he wants to cry. 

"M'm!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," The Doctor whispers painedly, pulling at him until he can feel his hot tears sliding down his face. There's something cold and hard digging into his side. "I can't get it off- I'll find you another, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." 

There's the sound of cutting and Lee tries to move away from the metal. A hand grabs him and holds him steady while he whines. He wants his Mum more than anything in the world.

Suddenly breathing's a little easier, and cold air rushes across him. There's still enough consciousness left in him to squirm in embarrassment at his chest being on display, and he just can't stop crying.

"I'll get you back to her, I will, I will, not again, not again, _please_ not again."

Sensation and sound starts to float away from him, or him from it, and nothingness reaches down and gathers him up like a protesting kitten, drawing him into its depths.

  


* * *

  


When Lee was ten, the family went to Skegness on holiday. Near the beach front were some big trampolines with bungee cords and a harness, so you could jump about fifteen feet in the air.

That's what this feels like.

He comes down close enough to hear her. Feel her cold shaking fingers poking at him. Once he opens his eyes enough to see her, blotchy and panicked, and it's a relief to close them again. Then with a lurch he whooshes up and away. Like the TARDIS. _Whoosh_.

"-I don't know how to help you. I can run it in thirty minutes, it'll be less if I overlap. I'll come back," Something is pressed into his hand, flat with jagged edges. "That's my promise. Don't be scared, I'll come back."

The Doctor's hands leave him, the rest of her leaves him. He wants to tell her to stay, but he doesn't have the brain room to feel afraid any more and hasn't the energy to stop her. There's just the pulsing in his chest and guts. He should be worried about that too. But he lets himself be pulled away again.

  


* * *

  


Lee wakes, and this time there's no tug back to the dark. This must be the moment of weightlessness where the cord snaps and so does his arm. No, no he's an adult now. Time shifts around like sand in a bucket. It could have been five minutes or fifty, there's no way to tell. What's the opposite of a Time Lord? His shoulder is cold. 

"It'll feel strange for a few minutes, but it'll settle your heart rate, BP, and temperature, which should start to clear your head. Now open your eyes for me and follow the screwdriver."

His eyes flutter open at the Doctor's voice, and he takes a second to focus on the screwdriver's funny-shaped end. Posi-tively not a pozidrive. She laughed at that once. She's so weak for stupid jokes.

It moves right, left, up, down, forward and back. Just like they do.

"Good boy." Warmth fills him and he thinks he smiles. He loves being called that. It's pathetic, but he had to grow up a 'good girl', so he's allowed to be pathetic about it.

The Doctor puts the sonic down, and starts filling a needle with something. His alarm at the sight of it proves quite effective at breaking through the fog in his brain.

"Was'at f'r?"

"I was just stabilising you before, this is what's going to finish the job." She draws it expertly and is mumbling numbers and words he doesn't understand under her breath.

"Where..?" Lee starts, but is too tired to work out how to finish. Where did you get that? Where are you going to stick it? Where did you learn to do that? Where did you go?

"This'll hurt, about an eight, but it goes away in about twelve seconds. You can bite on your present if you like, won't damage it." She puts some kind of fabric to his mouth, and he wraps his teeth around it. The Doctor's a compulsive liar, but she doesn't seem the type to lie about pain levels right now, and she's had her hand cut off before, so an eight is going to be pretty up there.

She swabs at his shoulder again, which is still oddly cold and numb, and holds him firm. He looks away.

"Relax as much as you can." She waits until he's taken a few breaths, and then his arm, his left side, his whole body's on fire. "Thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten," Why is the dark not coming back? Why won't it stop? Why won't it end? "Nine, eight, seven, six," A scream joins the Doctor's counting, the girl sounds in even more pain than he is. "Five, four, three," Why isn't she scared? She was crying before and now he's dying and she doesn't even care. "Two, one, zero."

The pain recedes as quickly as it came, and it's like being slid into a warm bath. The hands holding him down relax. One goes to his wrist, the other cards through his hair, and he can't help but turn his face to nuzzle at it.

"What a champ." She says, cupping his cheek and the happy feeling purrs like a cat inside him. It's too soft for her, she'll be back to being an obnoxious hedgehog soon, so he cherishes it while he can.

"C'n I sleep?" Lee mutters into her palm.

"I don't know, can you?" That's more like it. He frowns as she moves away to tidy his clothes over him to keep out the cold. She doesn't leave though. He clumsily catches hold of her hand, even though they're not running anywhere, and she keeps hold of it, squeezing back, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb until he falls asleep.

  


* * *

  


The present is a new binder - he'd forgotten they could look that white. Lee hasn't put it on yet, he doesn't need the Doctor to tell him that lowering his lung capacity right now is not a good idea. At some point when he was sleeping, she buttoned his shirt back up, which is much tighter now that his old sliced-up binder's doing nothing more than making an extra layer to ruck up uncomfortably against his chest.

"See, I didn't forget." She says proudly of her present. How could she forget? It hasn't been more than an hour.

He plucks up the courage to ask the right question.

"How long were you gone?" Lee asks quietly, rubbing the warm key in his right hand for comfort.

"About seven minutes."

"Doctor..."

"Oh, for _me_ you mean? That was probably more like thirty."

"Years?"

"Hmm." She won't look at him and carries on organising her medical supplies in a line.

"Why?" He asks, voice slightly too high. It's stupid, she doesn't look any different or is treating him any different, but it _matters_.

"I didn't know how to help you. The TARDIS has the fanciest tech in the universe - well, fancy by your standards at least - but I can't use most of it on you because it's not built for 21st century humans and I don't know what it will do to you, so I..." A muscle in her jaw twitches and she swallows before continuing. "The thought of going to another family and telling them - oh who am I kidding? I don't tell them - _knowing_ there would be another family out there whose child has vanished and they have no idea why... I've had a bad run these last incarnations-"

Of people dying? The idea makes him squirm a bit, even if it seems pretty obvious that if she's died so many times, then what hope does he have with only the one life. It really should put him off more, but he grips his key all the tighter.

The Doctor takes a deep breath.

"I thought I could do better at saving your life if I would just put the effort in, so I did." She finishes.

It's sort of like when she told him about about the pig in the TARDIS. The Doctor says 'big deal' things as if they're completely unimportant, even when she _knows_ they are - he can tell because she won't make eye-contact. Right now she's ordering her vials, lining them up, correct to the millimetre.

"You mean you went and became a real doctor? In a hospital?"

"And on a battlefield a bit, yeah. It made sense, the chances of one of you getting shot or burned or dismembered seemed higher than you getting glue ear."

It's completely ridiculous. You don't disappear for seven minutes and come back with a medical degree. But the Doctor _is_ completely ridiculous, and he knows it's true. A shudder runs through his body. He's not sure how well he feels any more, and maybe he goes pale because the Doctor immediately pushes a bowl under his chin. 

Lee shakes his head, leans back and has a few sips of something sweet and salty that tastes like a sports drink lost a fight with Poseidon. It's disgusting, but helping. And kind of grape-y.

He tries to keep up with her.

"So... How was that? Being Doctor The Doctor?"

"Doctor Martha Holloway actually. Everyone's 'the Doctor' in those places."

“At least you managed to stay in one piece without me there to save your baco- Wait! The pig!”

"Hmm? Oh, Trapper's fine. TARDIS leaks a bit. Puts a few years on your natural lifespan. I think she does it on purpose. For a while there was a cat on-board that liked to sleep by the engine who actually regenerated a few times." 

The Doctor huffs with laughter, but Lee can't raise a smile. His hand tightens around the cup. The idea that he might not have got to say goodbye to that loud, snorty, awkward, silly creature makes him realise that he might never have said goodbye to the one right next to him.

"I came back. Like I promised. I didn't lie." The Doctor says, more defensively than reassuringly, listening to his thoughts. Or the squeaking flex of the plastic cup. She moves a syringe exactly perpendicular to the vials with one precise movement.

"I know." He says, squeezing the key in his other hand. "And thanks - for doing all that, to try to look after me."

"Just forget about it," The Doctor replies, still not looking at him, "I've had hundreds-of-years gaps with my friends before, this doesn't come close. You won't even notice. It doesn't matter."

"Does to me. You only did it 'cause you cared about me."

"Of course I care about you, I love you, you know that." The Doctor says quietly, and she looks away awkwardly, turning an empty sachet at a right angle to the needle box.

Lee keeps watching her. He feels like he should say something, but it's not that kind of confession. More like the end of a war movie, where the emotionally repressed Dad realises that he's never actually told his injured son those three words. He doesn't want to be taken the wrong way, so he stays silent. There will probably be a better time in the future for all of that.

"Do you think you're ready to go? The TARDIS is just outside." The Doctor says, toes tapping on the floor. Lee doesn't know how long she's been sat still, doing nothing in particular but looking after him, but is willing to bet it's a personal record.

He nods, grabs the binder and covers his chest with his arms as she takes the cup off him. The Doctor doesn't put her hand out, but watches him carefully as he gets to his feet. 

"Think I'm alright."

"Good." She says brightly, and leaps to her feet as if the elastic bands holding her down have all snapped at once. "Between you and me, I much prefer being _The_ Doctor, rather than _A_ Doctor."

She lets him lead, and he finds the TARDIS doors less than a foot from the hut's. Lee lifts his key to unlock the door, and it pulls it in like a magnet. Maybe she's missed him.

The Doctor slides past with much less shoving than normal, bouncing across the room with her hands full of supplies and dumping them all in a shoot that opens with a clunk in the wall. She keeps her hands held up awkwardly for a moment, as if they're covered in mud, rather than freshly de-gloved and apparently clean. It reminds him of a character from Holby City, about to scrub up. ...And there's probably a reason for that, he realises, feeling slow. Then, quite deliberately, the Doctor slaps her hands together and wipes them on her trousers, before carefully turning some dials on the console. Scruffy but precise. It's a contradiction, but so is the rest of her. 

It occurs to Lee that maybe she wants _him_ to forget she's been away, so that _she_ can forget she's been away. There's a fine line between Hope and Denial, and the Doctor does like dancing along it.

Something nudges him in the back of the knees, and he almost finds himself sat on the pig, who apparently still remembers him. Or has got more friendly towards strangers these last three decades.

"Hey there...Sweep? Like Sooty and Sweep? She's pretty magicky and you communicate in squeaks, so..." Lee mumbles, struggling to think of a vaguely appropriate name as the tiredness starts creeping in again. He unfolds one arm so he can scratch the pig's belly, and his fingers catch on a new scar. Well, new for him, old for the pig, he guesses. Obviously it's not been as smooth sailing as she said - quelle surprise. He'd ask her about it, but she'll lie to him, and it'll stir up bad things, and she doesn't need that right now. Besides, the pig seems hale and hearty, and that's what matters. At least the Doctor still had one companion to lean on, albeit a lazy, slightly smelly, grunting- alright fine, maybe it wasn't that different for her.

"So, where do you want to go?" The Doctor shouts from across the room, practically buzzing. "Wherever you want. You can pick. Anywhere at all. Entirely your choice. But not Earth. I guess that makes it hard for you - do you want me to pick? I've got a list of a hundred and one places to show-"

"Uh..." Lee interrupts, wincing. "Could bed be first? I'm fine, I just think I'd struggle to..." Walk. Talk. Put his clothes on.

The Doctor wilts before his eyes, and he feels horribly guilty.

"I mean, we could still fly there - I could go to the pig's room to ride it out, I just-"

"No, no, it can wait. Do you need some assistance getting into bed?" She says, swallowing her energy and sliding into something a bit more still and a lot less comfortable. _'Do you need some assistance'_. It sounds weird coming from her, like a welcome-droid.

"Nah, I'm gucci," Something he's never said before and hopes never to say again. "I don't need doctoring, I just need some unconscious-ing." One day they'll deal with awkward situations like functional people, but until then, this is the best they've got.

"Fine, I'll just...I'll...just..." The Doctor looks around her, and then at him with something that looks like desperation. Lee's suddenly acutely aware that this might be the first time she's had nothing to do in thirty years.

"You'll...make an obstacle course for Hermione. Can't just rely on the TARDIS, got to keep that piggy-heart healthy." The pig looks up at him, eyes full of betrayal.

"Yep, that's what it was, well remembered." The Doctor says, as if it's not the most idiotic thing she's ever heard. "Come along, Butler." And she walks with the pig, into the right hand corridor, while he goes down the other.

His room is exactly the same. No dust, nothing out of place, even his dirty clothes on the floor smell no worse than when he left. The bathroom is all in one piece too, though slightly wet once the TARDIS turns the shower on him to make sure he doesn't fall asleep on the toilet.

Lee fights to get his clothes off and briefly mourns his ruined binder. He can't be bothered to find his pyjamas in the floor piles and crashes naked onto the bed. It's heaven. He's going to lie here for a month until the Doctor has to peel him off it. She's a however-many-thousand-year-old doctor-with-a-lowercase-'d', she's seen bare butts before.

The pillow's like a fabric cloud and he rubs his nose in it. He opens his eyes. Actually, that's not the same. He sniffs again. It smells tangy, sweaty, medicinal. 

Whether it's the TARDIS in his mind, or just his imagination, in a flash he sees the Doctor, dog-tired, collapsed on his bed, face buried in his pillow.

_He should be dead right now._

Lee pulls his legs up and wriggles under the duvet, pulling it up around his chin. Antiseptic. Latex maybe. Honey. A scent of something like iron that might be from the key he's still holding in his hand.

Outside his room there are thumps and bangs and oinks. "It's only a jump Scully, perfectly simple, keep your snout on the sprout. Now just watch me-"

 _A_ Doctor, or _the_ Doctor, at least she's _his_ Doctor.

  


* * *

  



End file.
